Review: Reformation of the Church by Iain Murray (part 2 of 12)

This post is the first of what will ultimately be twelve essays interacting with Iain Murray's book The Reformation of the Church.
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The second section of Iain Murray’s The Reformation of the Church is titled “The Rule for Reformation—The Word of God.” Martin Luther argues, over against the Roman doctrine of the infallibility of the Church and the Pope, that all human men are sinners subject to error, and that therefore their writings must be submitted to the judgment of Scripture. William Cunningham lays out the Regulative Principle established by the reformers—the doctrine that all the Church’s practices in worship must be positively found Scripture, and he goes on to apply it to the matter of church government, arguing that the Scriptures set out a particular form of government to which we must hold. John Hooper, writing during the Vestment Controversy in England in the 1550s, gives four criteria which must be met for something to be considered a “thing indifferent,” and concludes that the wearing of special priestly garments does not meet the criteria and is therefore prohibited by Scripture. John a Lasco delves into the vestments issue more deeply, showing how their use is prohibited by the abolition of the Aaronic priesthood in Christ. Finally, an excerpt from the Geneva Service Book of 1556 gives several scriptural proofs for the Regulative principle.

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Meme

Time for a meme:

Go into your archive.
Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
-->"High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing " - From "The Windhover", September 13, 2004.

Review: Reformation of the Church by Iain Murray (part 1 of 12)

This post is the first of what will ultimately be twelve essays interacting with Iain Murray's book The Reformation of the Church.
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In his introduction to The Reformation of the Church: a collection of Reformed and Puritan documents on Church issues, Iain Murray lays out his reasons for publishing this volume of collected works. He outlines how questions of the internal life of the Church were being discussed widely in England at the time of the volume’s publication, driven largely by an ecumenical movement that raised these topics in an attempt to “burst the bands” of denominationalism (p. 7). Murray points out that the Reformers and Puritans wrote extensively on the Church, and that their works had virtually disappeared from the conversation by the early twentieth century. This volume is intended to remedy that deficiency, providing the perspective of the men who perhaps more than anyone else in history had to consider the nature of the Church as they dealt with the world-shaking implications of the recovery of the gospel of justification by faith alone.

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Habakkuk 1:1-11: Two Perspectives

For as long as sin and its effect have been at work in the world, people have looked around them at the evil and misery they see, and asked the question “Why?” The people of God have often asked it of Him, and a similar one: “How long will you tolerate this?” This is precisely the question that the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk raises at the beginning of the book that bears his name. Two sermons, one by Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, and the other by Andrew Davis of First Baptist Church, Durham, NC, each look at Habakkuk 1:1-11 and seek to explain and apply it to the congregation. Each deals with the text, each applies the 2600-year-old story to modern life, and each presents the Gospel. One of them, however, explains the text in relation to the rest of the message of the Bible, and for this reason it is a better sermon.

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CD recommendation

If you like a capella choral music, and you like hymns, check out "Amazing Grace," by the Robert Shaw Chorale. It's far and away the best I've ever heard. You can find it on Amazon or download it from the iTunes Music Store.

Are there other albums of this type you enjoy?

GodBlogger meeting

If you're a God Blogger in the DC/MD/NoVA area, think about attending a meeting organized by David Wayne on the evening of Sept. 30. I personally won't be able to make it to this one, but it seems like a great opportunity for some of us in the Christian blogosphere to meet and be encouraged by one another.

More info here. If you're planning on going, leave a comment and let David know whether you'll be bringing anyone with you.

Review: The Bruised Reed by Richard Sibbes

Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the second person of the Trinity, is presented in Scripture as an inescapably fearful figure. The vision of Him that John records at the beginning of Revelation left John on his face as though dead, and considering Christ as the great Judge who will destroy His enemies at the last day has caused many more men to be utterly abased and driven to despair. But, strangely, gloriously, Jesus is also the Comforter, the Wonderful Counselor and Good Shepherd who is wondrously tender with His sheep. It is this tender, comforting side of Christ’s nature that Richard Sibbes is primarily concerned with meditating on in The Bruised Reed, and it is indeed a wonderful meditation.

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Review: The Worship of the American Puritans by Horton Davies

In The Worship of the American Puritans, Horton Davies provides an in-depth study of the theology and practice of the Puritans in New England in the seventeenth century that is useful as a historical study, as an aid for any Christian who wants better to understand the background for many Reformed worship practices today, and as a glimpse of the wholehearted devotion of a people perhaps more dedicated to Godliness than any other in American history. As he examines their religious calendar, sermons, singing, prayers, administration of the sacraments, marriages, funerals, ordinations, and even their architecture, several themes or beliefs emerge that pervaded Puritan life and shaped every area of their public worship. Among these are their belief in divine sovereignty and predestination, their concern for “visible sainthood” and maintaining a pure church, and their application of the regulative principle which resulted in a relentless determination to subject everything they did in worship to the rule of Scripture.

Davies seems to make much of what he regards as a paradox in Puritan theology. On one hand, they were rigorous Calvinists, with a firm belief in man’s natural depravity and the complete sovereignty of God in electing men to salvation. On the other hand, their extreme emphasis on holy living made it seem as though good works were an essential part of salvation. Furthermore, very few Puritans seem to have had much assurance of their salvation, as they often subjected themselves to intense soul-searching, wondering if their professed faith were true and they were indeed among the elect. To Davies, the very idea of a covenanting Calvinist—one who commits to live a life of visible sainthood in the community of believers—is somewhat paradoxical.

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The Reformation of the Church

The Protestant Reformation was a world-shaking event. It changed the structure of society wherever its doctrines took root, and the recovery of the Gospel which was its central focus brought millions of people out of spiritual darkness and into the light of Christ. The doctrine of justification by faith alone, which Luther called “the article by which the Church stands or falls”, was at the center of the radically different Protestant understanding of what it meant to be a Christian. Three important areas of thought were particularly affected by sola fide: the understanding of the church, the pastor and his role, and the sacraments.

First, the Reformation turned upside down the doctrine of the church. In medieval Roman Catholicism (and in the Roman church to this day), the church was understood to be the visible structure of priests, bishops, cardinals, monks, nuns, and other ordained officials who all owed allegiance to the Pope, the Bishop of Rome and the Vicar of Christ. The Nicean attributes of the church—one, holy, catholic, and apostolic—were abused by Catholic theologians foundational to the claim that Rome’s visible structure was the only true church and that salvation could only be found in obedience to Rome and her dispensation of the sacraments.

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Fundamentalism

In 1922 in New York City, Harry Fosdick preached a sermon entitled “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” At the time, Protestants were embroiled in a debate between liberal theology that had been on the rise for at least half a century and Fundamentalist theology, so named for its emphasis on “fundamentals of the faith” such as the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible, the virgin birth, divinity, resurrection, and second coming of Christ, and the substitutionary atonement. In his sermon Fosdick rails against the supposed intolerance of the Fundamentalists, arguing that Christians on both ends of the spectrum should be tolerant of each others’ views and avoid breaking fellowship with those of different opinions on these matters.

Though Fosdick has many good things to say, and his seeming zeal for spreading the Gospel is admirable, he ultimately is guilty of a dangerously errant view of the Scriptures, the Christian faith, and the place of tolerance in the Church. First, he has a poor understanding of the doctrine of Scripture and the nature of God’s Word. Fosdick accuses Fundamentalists of believing that the entirety of the Bible was “inerrantly dictated by God to men.” While there may have been a very small minority of Fundamentalists who held to this view in Fosdick’s day, it has never been the dominant or orthodox understanding of the mode of God’s inspiration of the Scriptures. This is simply a caricature by Fosdick that has little to do with the true Protestant doctrine of the plenary verbal inspiration of the Bible..

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Coming posts

Since August, and through this December, deo volente, I am serving as a pastoral intern at Capitol Hill Baptist Church. I'm reading quite a bit on ecclesiology, and writing 800-1000 words nearly every day, so I'm staying quite busy.

A friend encouraged me to post some of the papers I've been writing in this space, so I think I'm going to begin doing that. Not because I think many people will be particularly interested in what I have to say, but simply so that you all can see that I am keeping quite busy and writing regularly (which was, after all, the reason I started this blog).